Nokia EOS PureView coming July 11?

Nokia has announced an event for July 11 where it promises we will see 'zoom reinvented'. Is the EOS PureView inbound?

Nokia has issued invitations to a press event for July 11 in New York where it promises zoom will be ‘reinvented’. Unless Nokia is far sneakier than we thought this can only mean one thing: the arrival of the much-rumoured and much-leaked Nokia EOS PureView cameraphone.

The Nokia EOS is thought to be the long-promised Windows Phone 8 implementation of Nokia’s 41-megpaixel PureView camera technology, previously only seen in the Symbian-powered Nokia 808 PureView. That means that despite the fact the handset has primarily been rumoured under the Nokia EOS moniker it’s almost certain to have the Lumia brand strapped to it and probably some kind of numeric designation – perhaps Nokia Lumia 950? Who knows.

In recent weeks the Nokia EOS leaks have turned into a raging torrent of pictures and information – in terms of design we know exactly what to expect: a Nokia Lumia 920 clone which is about 1mm thinner (barely noticeable) and has a massive great camera module jutting out of the back panel. It is a more compact setup than what we saw on the original Nokia 808, but still, it’s pretty bulky.

So far we know from leaked video footage the device features a mechanical camera shutter to assist the Xenon flash and generally ensure the best picture quality possible. Nokia’s talking about reinventing camera phone zoom and that could mean a couple of things.

The Nokia 808’s 41-megapixel camera used oversampling techniques during capture and one of the effects of this was that it offered a ‘lossless zoom’, ie: it was digital rather than optical but still offered excellent quality far above what you’d normally get from a digital zoom. Whether Nokia has tweaked this aspect or gone for a full-blown optical zoom, which has been rumoured before, remains to be seen.

Almost certainly the camera tech will have been modified in some way since we saw it on the Nokia 808. With the recently launched Lumia 925, Nokia used the same 8.7-megapixel setup from the Lumia 920 with PureView optical image stabilisation (OIS), but tweaked it with the addition of a sixth glass lens and a higher ISO setting. Nokia has also been quite vocal in the past about how it is constantly pouring resources into its camera tech division and the amount of time which has passed must mean advances have been made to the 41-megapixel hardware.

Aside from the camera tech, the Nokia EOS’ spec is thought to be broadly similar to that of the Lumia 920 and Lumia 925, which would mean a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor, no microSD storage and a 720p Nokia ClearBlack and PureMotion HD+ display. This is mostly speculation though, hopefully Nokia will have a few extra surprises up its sleeve on the day. We’ll be sure to bring you all the information as we get it.